Age Bin - Afghanistan

James Brown suggests in The Age that “The Taliban has waged a propaganda war…. Successful spin … has taken a mix of ragtag local fighters, criminal networks, and ideological extremists and linked them to the mythology of the Soviet-destroying mujahideen.”

Oh, come on. The people who puffed a handful of sandaled malcontents into a world-defying juggernaut of global terrorism were George Bush, Tony Blair, and John Howard, and they did this for the obvious reason that in their uninflated state tribesmen alternating seasonally between the hoe and the AK-47 make lousy bogeymen.

Even if you feel that Australia should have a permanent hate on for ragtag local fighters, criminal networks, and ideological extremists it should be noted that we can find them in, inter alia, Serbia, Setzuan, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Syria, and the Solomon Islands, and the only one of those we have any business turning up in is, at a pinch, the Solomons. The Taliban are a nasty lot, but they are not the Devil, and even if they were Australia is not the Archangel Michael.